Hello, Im new to Blackberries, never had one before. My new job however is asking me to purchase one for the email and msg capabilities. I need one that is within my budget, cant afford a fancy or brand new one. I came across this one for sale that looks like it will e a good buy. But I need the opinion of people that have blackberry experience, is this a good purchase? The seller states he only has the charger and usb cord with the phone. The item on e bay is 250558583678, please give educated opinions.

I wouldn't recommend paying more than $50 or so for an 8830. It doesn't have a lot of storage so you really can't add much in the way of applications. It's good for overseas use since it supports CDMA and GSM, but only GPRS--I don't think it supports EDGE. It's fairly dated, but a solid hadset. Due to the shortage of storage, I doubt it will ever get OS 5.

I recommend looking at something like the Curve 2 8530 which is inexpensive (with a contract), has an updated OS and a lot of storage space for applications. Not sure if Sprint has the 8530 yet... A good second choice is the Curve 8330, which Sprint does have.

As for the software, no worries if the original disk is not included. You can download all the software included on the disk from RIM's Website for free. And by downloading it direct from RIM you're sure to get the latest version. Sometimes the versions on the disk are a bit stale, the disk having been created up to a full year ago!